Trinity College S.Thompson, J.Penman, S.Dawson 2000 historical/70 trinity college.pdf · 1 P. J....

Trinity College – S.Thompson, J.Penman, S.Dawson 2000

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #70 Page 1



CONTENTS

INFORMED MINDS AND WARM HEARTS

Trinity Methodist Theological College 1929-41 by Rev. Susan J Thompson MA

SOME MUSINGS ON MY PERSONAL SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

by Rev. John A (Jack) Penman BA

MINISTERING THE GOSPEL IN A TIME OF CHANGE

by Rev. Selwyn Dawson MA

This publication further celebrates the opening of Trinity College in 1929. Susan

Thompson's contribution here is a detailed description of the succession of events

throughout 1929-41 with accompanying observations.

In Journal 1998 we featured 'From Where I'm Standing', by Rev. Jack Penman, which

covered selected facets of Trinity College history and focused particularly on his own

experiences while training at the College during 1949-50. Now we include more

thoughts from Jack, based on his own life journey.

Further support is given by Rev. Selwyn Dawson's treatise on the opportunities

available to the presbyters of the Methodist Church in these changing times.

We have thus supplemented the concept of 'Informed Minds and Warm Hearts' with

the mature reflections of two of the leading thinkers of the Methodist Church who

received their initial training at Trinity College.

Sketch of Grafton Road entrance 1963, Daryl Cockburn, Trinity College Magazine Vol 30.



INFORMED MINDS AND WARM HEARTS:

Trinity Methodist Theological College 1929-1941

Susan presented this paper at the Annual General Meeting of the Wesley Historical

Society (NZ). She based it on her research to compile material towards a PhD at the

University of Auckland Theology Department. Her research is sponsored by the

Bradley Trust of the Methodist Church and the Federation of University Women.

Rev. Susan Thompson

In his 1983 study, New Zealanders and the Methodist Evangel, the historian, Peter

Lineham, described Methodism as "a denomination not characterised by excessive

theological thinking."1 He was talking about the 1920s, but, at the end of the twentieth

century, his observation may have continuing relevance. Methodists who value

theological reflection may find the notion that their denomination is deficient in this

aspect of its religious life highly offensive. Others will draw on their own experience

and accept Lineham's words as a valid criticism of a church which has often been

suspicious of the intellectual enterprise. Some Methodists will express that suspicion,

arguing, for example, that an excess of academic theology prevents people from

engaging with real life and the needs of their own time and place. This ambivalence

about the importance of theological thinking has been a central theme in the history of

1 P. J. Lineham, New Zealanders and the Methodist Evangel: An Interpretation of the

Policies and Performance of the Methodist Church of New Zealand, Wesley Historical

Society of New Zealand, No. 42, September 1983, p. 20.



Methodist training for presbyteral ministry. Evangelical misgivings over ministry

preparation that was overly academic, evident in early-nineteenth century debates in

Britain and America regarding the creation of the first Methodist theological colleges,2

were also present in the New Zealand context.

The establishment of Trinity College in Auckland in 1929 was an important turning

point in the history of Methodist training in New Zealand. A huge investment of the

church's energy and finance, the college marked a new commitment to a residential or

seminary model of ministry education. The solidity of bricks and mortar replaced the

mobility that had characterised the institution's previous life, and, in the 1930s, a level

of scholarship was attained that had not been present before. While Methodist

educators sought a middle way which emphasised the informed mind and the warm

heart, some scepticism about Trinity's increasingly academic focus continued to be

expressed in the first decade of the new college's life. The tension between ministry

training as "an academic educational enterprise" and as "a socialising formational

process" was difficult to hold in balance.3

The building of a new Methodist theological college was "on the mind of the

Connexion" from the closure of Prince Albert College in 1907.4 That institution sat on

the site of the old Wesleyan College and Seminary, established in 1850 to provide

education for the children of Wesleyan missionaries. Re-opened in 1895 as a

secondary school with a theological department, the college accumulated a large debt

and was badly affected by competition with the free place system introduced into

public high schools.5 The closure of Prince Albert College left Pakeha training for

ministry without a home. Lectures were held on a temporary basis in the Pitt Street

Church, and the theology students accommodated in a boarding house on Grafton

Road and rented premises in Ponsonby.6 Early steps to re-establish the college in the

second decade of the twentieth century coincided with significant occasions of

denominational confidence for Methodists in New Zealand.

In 1913 the New Zealand church achieved its long-awaited independence from the

Australasian Methodist Conference. Separation from Australia gave New Zealand

2 See Tim Macquiban, Practical Piety or Lettered Learning, Wesley Historical Society Vol.

50, October 1995, p. 97. 3 Douglas Pratt, "Theological Education and Ministerial Formation: Academic

Accountability and Ecclesial Expectation in Theological Training", Colloquium 24/2 1992,

p. 104. 4 E. W. Hames to J.J. Lewis, undated, Trinity College Archives (TC), Methodist Collection

(Met) p. 1. 5 See E. W. Hames, Prince Albert College Trust: A Footnote to New Zealand Methodist

History, Wesley Historical Society of New Zealand, No. 34, April 1979, pp. 1-12; Prince

Albert College Board of Governors Minute Book 1907, 7 July 1905, Methodist Church

Archives (MCA), Auckland (Ak.), 205/2, p. 7. 6 New Zealand Methodist Times (NZMT), 25 January 1911, p. 5.



Methodists self-government at a time when the denomination's previously divided

resources were being combined. The Methodist union of 1913 brought Primitive

Methodists into partnership with a church which had already effected a union between

the Wesleyan, Bible Christian and United Free Methodist churches. A new theological

institution was considered an appropriate symbol of self-determination, and the 1911

Conference inaugurated a fundraising appeal as a way of celebrating independence. It

is likely that Methodists recognised the potential role of a college in reflecting and

promoting a sense of denominational identity. The 1911 Conference designated the

Rev. Charles Garland (1857-1918) to be full-time principal from 1912,7 and in that

year the college was relocated to a property called Dunholme in Remuera. In 1911 a

block of land in Epsom was purchased as a possible site for the new college,8 and in

1912 Conference appointed a building committee to be based in Auckland with

Garland as convenor.9

EVANGELISM, BIBLICAL TRUTH AND A SOCIAL GOSPEL

Interrupted by the First World War, the scheme for a new college resumed in the

1920s and was presented as an initiative for a new century. For Methodists in New

Zealand, the post-war period was a time of crisis and re-definition. In its report to the

1922 Conference, for example, the Welfare of the Church Committee observed that

the church was working in "a world torn with strife and impoverished by losses. Old

bonds [were] broken and old props shattered." The Committee described the attitude

of society to the church as "one of indifference deepening into hostility." 10

The

denomination was aware of a decline in levels of participation in church life. For a

time Methodist statistics fell after the war from a total of 25,291 members in 1918 to

24,543 in 1928.11

When measured against the total population, Methodist affiliation

also declined, from 9.91% in 1916 to 8.9% in 1926.12

The sense of crisis contributed

to a profound shift in New Zealand Methodism's theological focus away from its

traditional revivalism to a concern to 'breathe the spirit of the modem age'. This shift

was marked by a re-evaluation of old methods of mass evangelism; a desire for a

modem and clear headed presentation of biblical truth, taking into account "the

changing needs and altered temperament of [the] time"; and a new emphasis on the

7 Minutes of the Annual Conference of the Methodist Church of Australasia in New Zealand

{MAC), 1911, p. 61. 8 Methodist Theological Institution 1911-1919,21 December 1911, TC, Met 081/1/1

9 MAC, 1912, p. 56.

10 Minutes of the Annual Conference of the Methodist Church of New Zealand (MAC) 1922,

p.72. 11

Methodist membership figures did not regain their 1918 level until the early 1930s.

There was also a significant drop in the numbers attending worship from a total of 77,156

in 1918 to 70,985 in 1928. "Summary of General Returns", MAC, 1919 & 1929. 12

A. K. Davidson & P. J. Lineham, Transplanted Christianity: Documents Illustrating

Aspects of New Zealand Church History, Palmerston North, Dunmore Press, 1989 p. 246.



ideals of a social gospel, as expressed in the Social Creed adopted by the 1923

Methodist Conference.13

For Methodist leaders like the Rev. Charles H. Laws (1867-1958) the church's ability

to move into the future was inescapably "bound up with the effectiveness of the

Christian Ministry." As President of the New Zealand Conference in 1922, Laws

reiterated the need for a new theological institution to be at the forefront of the

church's "work for the New Century." He envisaged a course of training which would

prepare students for ministry in a new and progressive age through an encounter with

"the best modem scholarship" and "the actualities of human life and experience,

broadened by instruction in modem literature, philosophical thought, and economic

theory".14

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COLLEGE

Laws played a crucial role in the establishment of the new college. Described in later

life as "a fearsome old statesman" he could be kindly and sharp.15

Laws regarded his

own time in training at the Three Kings Theological Institution in the mid-1880s as

"largely wasted", and was concerned that students receive the best educational

opportunities. Appointed principal of the Methodist college after the sudden death of

Garland in 1918, he accepted the position "on the understanding that [he] would [lead]

a Movement for a new Building on another site".16

Eric Hames noted that Laws had

tremendous gifts of leadership and was "capable of arousing [people] to action and

driving a thing through".17

The development of theological thinking was presented as a major priority of training

for ministry at the new college. Speaking at the opening of Trinity College in February

1929, Laws stated that lecturers would seek "to train and inform the mind, to equip

men with knowledge and [the] capacity to learn ... show[ing] them what questions

[people] are asking to-day and where the answers lie".18

The desire for a closer

relationship with the world of the university was seen as an important way of

achieving this aim and has been a recurrent theme in the history of Methodist

theological education in New Zealand. Sectarian and secular pressures saw theology

excluded from universities in New Zealand and Australia from the nineteenth century.

In spite of this, small denominational teaching institutions like Trinity College looked

13

See Reports of the Committee on Church Membership and Church Services and of the

Evangelism Committee, MAC, 1921, pp. 50-54. A copy of the Social Creed may be found

in Ibid., 1922, pp. 75-76. 14

C. H. Laws, "The Claims of the Ministry", NZMT, 13 May 1922, p. 9. 15

Trinity College Oral History (TCOH), Selwyn Dawson, 10 July 1996. 16

C. H. Laws, "Notes for the Rev. Wesley Parker" (unpublished manuscript), pp 4 9-10 17

Hames to Lewis, undated, p. 2. 18

C. H. Laws, "Trinity Theological College: An address delivered at the opening

ceremony, February 27, 1929", NZMT, 23 March 1929, p. 10.



to the university to provide a wider academic setting, opportunities for their brighter

students to be extended, and the possibility of a degree credential for their courses.

Methodist educators, for example, showed an early interest in the work of the

university, and the Revs. Alexander Reid (1821-1891) and Joseph Simmonds (1845-

1936) were among those who served for lengthy periods on the Council of the

Auckland University College.19

The Conference expressed its support for the

establishment of a divinity degree from 1911 and thereafter at frequent intervals.20

LINKS WITH THE UNIVERSITY

The decision to build the new college at Grafton was heavily influenced by the site's

proximity to the university. The church had options to build on its land at Epsom or to

rebuild at Dunholme, and, looking back, Hames, a later principal of the college,

believed either site might have served the connexion well, allowing more money to be

spent on staff than costly buildings.21

As Laws noted in his reflections, however, the

new college's nearness to the university proved the deciding factor. The Grafton site

was seen as more convenient and, in addition, "was historic ground [having] been

connected with the Church's educational work in the first days."22

The university's ability to challenge the church to look beyond its own walls was

demonstrated at functions held to celebrate the opening of Trinity College. One of the

addresses given in connection with the college's opening, for example, was delivered

by Horace Belshaw, professor of economics at the Auckland University College from

1927 to 1945. In his history of the Auckland university, Keith Sinclair described

Belshaw as the "most impressive of a new kind of scholar" to be employed there in the

1920s.23

Speaking on the theme of "Education for Good Citizenship", Belshaw called

upon Methodists to "stress more fully the social implications of Christianity", and to

modify its interpretation of Christ's teaching "in the light of changing social

phenomena and new contributions to knowledge." He recommended the college's

curriculum include a study of the social sciences.24

Among the dignitaries attending a

Trinity College high tea was Kenneth Mackenzie, Vice-President of the Auckland

University College Council, who congratulated the theological institution on finding a

19

Reid was a member of the Council from 1883 to 1891, and Simmonds served from 1892

to 1894 and from 1902 to 1924. Keith Sinclair, A History of the University of Auckland

1883-1983, Auckland, Auckland University Press, p. 305-306. 20

NZMT, 11 March 1911, p. 10. 21

Hames, Letter to Lewis, undated, p. 1. 22

Laws, "Notes for the Rev. Wesley Parker", p. 10. The comment about "historic

ground" was a reference to the Methodist Church's 'Native Institution', which was located

at Grafton from 1845 to 1848 for the training of young Maori men in matters of 'religion

and civilisation'. See William Morley, The History of Methodism in New Zealand,

Wellington, McKee & Company, 1900, pp. 109-114. 23

Sinclair, University of Auckland, p. 133. 24

H. Belshaw, "Education for Good Citizenship", NZMT, 6 April 1929, p. 10.



fitting home, and "stressed the need for breadth of outlook in the ministry." He

observed that it was '"up to young men to make the most of their University

opportunities'", and expressed the hope that there would be "many links" between the

theological and university colleges.25

Despite such rhetoric and contrary to Methodist

aspirations, the university did little to fulfil this hope for another sixty years.

THE INFLUENCE OF REV. C H LAWS

Rev. Charles Laws

The formation of character was considered a second major priority of training for

ministry at the new Methodist college. While the term 'formation' was not used in the

1920s, Laws understood the need for students to undergo a process of personal

preparation which was directed towards the exercise of their vocation. He conceived

such a process to include the development of morality, devotion and gifts of

personality. Speaking to Methodist ordinands as ex-President of the Conference in

1923, for example, he stressed the need for the ministry to be "men of arresting moral

quality". How else, he asked, would people believe in the power of Christ to overcome

sin? He urged the ordinands to make the venture of "absolute discipleship", and

reminded them of the great concepts of "Holiness, Sanctification [and] Perfect

Love".26

At the laying of Trinity College's foundation stone in 1927, Laws declared that the

theological institution was no "mere school for the coaching of young men to pass the

required examinations for entering one of the professions." Instead it sought to

25

Quoted in "Trinity College Tea", NZMT, 20 April 1929, p. 15. 26 C. H. Laws, "Ordination Charge: Delivered at the Ordination of the Revs W. B.

Cuming, H. Ford, W. Gatman, A. M. Costain and A. E. Jefferson, on February 25 1923",

Ibid., 3 March 1923, p. 9.



produce students of "balanced, temperate, believing judgement", who had

unimpeachable candour, courage, broad social sympathies, inner warmth and the

wisdom to speak healing and guiding words in times of anxiety.27

While some of these

qualities may have implied the acquisition of various practical ministry skills. Laws

seemed more concerned that students develop personal attitudes and religious

sensitivities Whether this preference was based upon the conviction that "ministerial

vocation is a way of being before it is a way of doing" is unknown.28

Laws did not

express his ideas using such language. A strong emphasis on equipping students with

practical skills did not develop in the Methodist, Anglican or Presbyterian

programmes of ministry training in New Zealand until at least the 1960s.29

Within his broad understanding of the need for the development of character as an

aspect of ministerial training. Laws was particularly convinced of the importance of

inner warmth. A noted evangelistic preacher himself,30

Laws believed that "it is still

broadly true that a Methodist Minister has nothing to do but to save souls".31

At

Trinity's opening he made it clear that communicating an "ardour of evangelism" sat

alongside the academic component of training.

The college's task, he said, was to seek to "keep the inner fires glowing in every

student's heart, to add to the scientist's passion for truth the evangelist's passion for

[people], and so to give to the Church ministers who ... are determined to know

nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified."32

While Laws accepted the need for the

church to face the challenge of modern thinking, he expressed a traditional Methodist

understanding of the power of conversion.

REV. DR H RANSTON: EUROPEAN SCHOLARSHIP

In 1931 Laws was succeeded as principal of Trinity College by the Rev Dr Harry

Ranston (1878-1971), who held this position for the next ten years. During that time

Methodist training reached a level of scholarship that had not been present before

while continuing to emphasise the need for students to grow in evangelical experience.

A student of the time and later Trinity lecturer the Rev John Silvester (1912-1993),

27

C. H. Laws, "Address at the laying of the foundation stone of Trinity Methodist

Theological College, June 15th, 1927", Ibid., 2 July 1927, p. 9. 28

Pratt, "Ministerial Education and Ministerial Formation", p. 105. 29

See A.K. Davidson, Selwyn's Legacy: The College of St John the Evangelist Te Waimate

and Auckland. 1843-1992, A History, Auckland, The College of St John the Evangelist,

1993, pp. 221 -223; Ian Breward, Grace and Truth: A History of Theological Hall Knox

College, Dunedin 1876-1975, Dunedin, Presbyterian Church 1975 pp 70-72, 85-86. 30

See Wesley Parker (ed.). Rev. C. H. Laws: Memoirs and Addresses, Wellington, A. H. &

A. W. Reed, 1954, pp. 37-42. 31

C. H. Laws, "Ordination Charge", NZMT, 3 March 1923, p. 9. 32

Laws, "Trinity Theological College", p. 10.



wrote that students graduated from college in the 1930s as "liberals somewhat in the

mould of Peake's Commentary33

and evangelicals in the Pauline mould".34

Dr. Harry Ranston

Ranston was the first Methodist principal in New Zealand to have an extended

scholarly career. Described by John Lewis as "a lonely road of self preparation" 35

his

educational back-ground illustrated some of the difficulties in becoming an academic

in the early twentieth century. Ranston was a Yorkshireman from a working class

home and was sent to work from the age often, winning a scholarship to high school

by attending night classes. Accepted as a candidate for the Primitive Methodist

ministry in 1900, he entered Hartley College, Manchester, where he came under the

influence of the great liberal lay biblical scholar, Arthur S. Peake. Further study was

halted by a lack of finance, and in 1902 Ranston came to New Zealand and was

accepted as a probationer by the Australasian Wesleyan Conference in 1904.36

Combining circuit work with extra-mural study from the University of New Zealand,

he completed a BA in 1913 and an MA in 1914, and in 1923 became the first New

Zealand Methodist minister to earn his doctorate, writing a thesis on "Ecclesiastes and

the Early Greek Wisdom Literature".37

Ranston later expressed the sense of isolation

33

A. S. Peake, A Commentary on the Bible, London & Edinburgh, Jack Ltd., 1919. 34

John Silvester, "Counter Revolution: A Personal Theological Statement", The

Methodist Theological Review, No. 8, November 1995, p. 16. 35

J. J. Lewis, The Trinity College Story, Wesley Historical Society of New Zealand, Nos. 3

& 4, Vol. 31, October 1978, p. 13. 36

Ranston was received under the name "Harry Ramsbottom". His name was changed in

the Conference Minutes in 1906. 37

C. H. Laws was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity by the Victoria University of

Toronto in 1922.



he felt carrying out advanced research in New Zealand, "far from the great libraries

and the inspiration of personal contact" with experts in his own area of study.38

Published in London, Ranston's thesis and a second work, The Old Testament Wisdom

Books and Their Teaching (1930), received international acknowledgement,39

and

were regarded with a great deal of colonial Methodist pride. Appointed to the

Methodist theological college as a permanent lecturer in biblical languages and

literature in 1924, Ranston also had links with an academic community beyond the

church. He served on the Auckland University College Council from 1925 to 1933, for

example, and taught Hebrew at the university from 1934 to 1938. He was a friend and

student of the liberal and scholarly Rabbi Samuel Goldstein of the Auckland Hebrew

Congregation.40

In the 1930s Ranston's biblical teaching brought a new depth to Trinity's academic

programme. His lectures were solid and up-to-date, introducing theology students to

historical critical questions of "the authorship, date, composition, [and] contents" of

the biblical texts.41

He used standard works like James Hastings' Dictionary of the

Bible (1898-1904) and Peake's A Commentary on the Bible (1919) as his main

textbooks, and showed evidence of wide reading, quoting scholars like Duhm and

Wellhausen, the American William Rainey Harper, Andrew Davidson and C.H. Dodd.

Surviving lecture notes reveal a sound awareness of topical debates over concepts like

form criticism and Dodd's realised eschatology.42

Ranston also showed an early interest in the writings of the Protestant theologian Karl

Barth, whose works were beginning to be known in English-speaking countries in the

early-1930s. Writing in the New Zealand Methodist Times in 1932, for example,

Ranston praised new theologians like Barth and his contemporary Emil Brunner, for

the way they put God "back into the centre of human thinking on religion", calling

them "prophets with a great and needed message for the Church of today." Yet he did

not accept their views uncritically, noting that [they] are terribly one-sided... their

paradoxical style of writing is difficult to understand, their dislike for mysticism

38

Harry Ranston, Ecclesiastes and the Early Greek Wisdom Literature, London, Epworth

& J. Alfred Sharp, 1925, p. 7. 39

See references to Ranston in W. Baumgartner, "The Wisdom Literature" in H. H.

Rowley (ed.), The Old Testament and Modern Study: A Generation of Discovery and

Research, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1956, pp. 210-237. 40

Ranston attended the Rabbi's eightieth birthday celebrations in 1933 and was reported

to have paid tribute "to the manner in which [Goldstein] had revealed to students of other

denominations the many beauties of the ancient Hebrew tongue and to the Rabbi's

liberality and breadth of mind." Ida Israel, "Rabbi Samuel Aaron Goldstein" in Ann

Gluckman (ed). Identity and Involvement, Auckland Jewry, Past and Present, Palmerston

North, Dunmore Press, 1990, p. 60. 41

Harry Ranston, "Lecture notes: An introduction to the Hebrew prophets based on

Box's book", TC, Met 070/1/3. 42

Eric Clement, "Lecture and study notes", 1939-1941, MCA, Ak., Box 1 H237



ignores or rejects spiritual experiences which have proved of untold value in the

history of Christianity, and the emphasis on the sterner and transcendental elements

of God's character neglect the other sides so wonderfully revealed in Jesus.43

Ranston's willingness to engage with new thought left students like Silvester "deeply

impressed" with an "ideal of exact, passionately believing Biblical scholarship".44

Other Methodists were more critical, reflecting suspicion of an analytical approach to

scripture. In a letter to the Methodist newspaper in 1937, for example, D.H.

Woodcock, a Sunday School superintendent from Russell, accused the college of a

pathetic lack of evangelical teaching. He had not been impressed by a young minister

who suggested that '"if the Old Testament writers had any idea that we'd take literally

what they wrote, they would have burned their writings.'" "If Trinity has been guilty

of teaching negative truths," pronounced the correspondent, "it is over-time that some

sort of enquiry be held."45

Looking back on his time as a college lecturer, Ranston

recalled that he had sometimes been accused of being "a 'devil's advocate' and even 'a

Jesuit in disguise'."46

While Trinity's academic life developed more substance in the 1930s, it tended to be

formed by the ideas of European thinkers, rather than being a response to issues

arising from the New Zealand context. A failure to address questions of national

identity marked the ministry training programmes of all the mainstream churches in

New Zealand until at least the 1970s. Writing in 1966, the Presbyterian theology

lecturer, Frank Nichol, suggested that theology "must be one of New Zealand's least

indigenous activities".47

MAHARAIA WINIATA: MAORI AND CHRISTIANITY,

CULTURAL CHANGE

One notable Methodist exception to this lack of theological reflection was a series of

articles written for the Trinity College Magazine between 1937 and 1939 by the

student, Maharaia Winiata (1912-1960), on the interaction between Maori and

Christianity. An independent thinker who went on to become a distinguished scholar

43

Harry Ranston, "The Barthian Theology and Spiritual Advance" NZMT 16 April 1932,

p. 6. 44

John Silvester, "This Perplexes Me", NZMT, 14 August 1948, p. 199. 45

NZMT, 9 October 1937, p. 181. Methodist students responded to this letter, stating that

Woodcock's accusations were "a most unfair reflection" upon Ranston and the college

tutor, the Rev. William T. Blight (1892-1983), who they described as "men whom we have

learnt to honour for their intense Spiritual lives and their Evangelical Teaching." Ibid., 6

November 1937, p. 213. 46

Harry Ranston, "Our Theological College", Ibid., 25 October 1947, p. 201. 47

Frank Nichol, "Theology in New Zealand", Landfall, Vol. 20, No 1 March 1966 p. 49.



and educationalist,48

Winiata discussed the process of cultural change, arguing that

Maori had been "set adrift from the old moorings of the historical values, upon the

strange seas of European systems."49

He identified a high Maori death rate, appalling

living conditions, and limited land and economic resources as factors causing concern

for the future of the race. Winiata recognised a need for Maori to take hold of some of

the Pakeha world's methods and standards of value in order to survive, but did not

favour "the absolute Europeanisation" of Maori. While affirming the role of the church in giving "the true orientation to Maori life",

50 he criticised the way the

expectations of European Christians were often thrust upon Christians were often

thrust upon Maori. Questioning the assumption that Christ should always be portrayed

as a European, for example, he invoked an alternative image of the Christ "who treads

the Maori Way." He noted that conflict between denominations bewildered some

Maori and was often a barrier to acceptance of Christianity.51

Dr. Maharaia Winiata

Provocative and analytical, Winiata's articles raised issues of local context and identity

rarely addressed within New Zealand churches or society in the 1930s.

48

Winiata was received on to probation in 1940 but did not complete his studies. He

entered the teaching profession, and in 1949 was given the status of a Maori Home

Missionary, which he held until his death. Winiata received a Nuffield Fellowship in 1952

and completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Edinburgh on "The Changing Role of

the Leader in Maori Society", becoming the first Maori to receive a PhD from a British

university. MAC, 1960, pp. 18-19. 49

Maharaia Winiata, "The Maori and Christianity", Trinity Collese Magazine October

1938, p. 13. 50

Maharaia Winiata, "Maori Problems", Ibid., October 1939, p. 10.

51 Winiata, "The Maori and Christianity", p. 14.



TERTIARY STUDY

The new college took advantage of its proximity to the university, and Methodist

students were encouraged to undertake tertiary study so long as it did not seriously

interfere with their college course. From 1929 to 1941 an average of five students a

year engaged in university work of some kind. Most were undergraduates beginning a

BA degree, but some worked at a more advanced level. The Rev. John Lewis, for

example, completed his MA while at Trinity and spent time preparing for intermediate

BD exams through the Melbourne College of Divinity. Overall, the number of

Methodist ministers and probationers with a bachelors degree or higher rose from 7.08

in 1930 to 13.27 in 1940, an increase which continued throughout the twentieth

century as more clergy gained academic qualifications.52

INFLUENCE OF THE STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT

In the early 1930s the Auckland University College was a lively centre of intellectual

stimulation and student politics, marked by debates over law and order academic

freedom and the treatment of New Zealand's growing numbers of unemployed. The

publication of the new literary journal, Phoenix, in 1932 saw the university become

the focus for an original movement of New Zealand writing. As part-time students, the

Trinity men may have been too busy to be caught up in such activities. For some,

however, involvement with the Student Christian Movement proved highly formative,

and helped to broaden their horizons beyond the confines of the college. A student at

Trinity from 1932 to 1934 the Rev Robert Thornley, attended his first SCM camp in

1931, and recalled taking part in a programme at the university which included

studies, monthly Sunday teas with speakers and visits from overseas leaders. He later

wrote of the way SCM explored every realm of Christian concern... [facing] our

modern issues, racial conflict world poverty and hunger, justice and peacemaking in a

world of division and strife.' A seedbed for future ecumenical leadership, SCM

exposed Methodist students to a variety of issues and causes, and helped to sharpen

and expand their understanding of connections between church and society.53

EVANGELISTIC ACTIVITIES

Alongside the development of theological thinking in the 1930s Methodist training

maintained a concern for the evangelical formation of ministry students An

acknowledgement of the denomination's traditional priority of evangelism was a

feature of all of Ranston's writings about ministry preparation in the 1930s and may

indicate his awareness of the level of hostility some church members felt towards the

college. The principal himself had a strong simple faith, and was described by William

52

S. J. Thompson, "A New Theology of Ministry: The Ordained Methodist Ministry in

New Zealand 1880-1980", MA, University of Canterbury, 1990, p. 207. 53

Robert Thornley, "Forty Years in Ministry: 1935-1975", (unpublished manuscript), pp.

19-20.



Sinclair as being "as much at home in conducting a prayer meeting or an evangelistic

mission as he [was] in his study surrounded by his Greek and Hebrew books."54

Like Laws, Ranston believed that ministry training should combine learning with the

development of a burning heart, and argued that there was "no rivalry between

evangelism and intellectualism." "Learning we desire for the students-he noted in

1933, "yet we do not aim at producing learned men as such, but to use learning to

make them competent apostles and preachers of Christ to give [them] ability to

commend effectively the Gospel in an age of moral and spiritual confusion.55

This

aspiration led Trinity College to continued involvement in evangelism at a time when

liberal enthusiasm for special evangelistic campaigns was declining.

Methodist theology students participated in two main forms of evangelism in the

1930s. They conducted evangelistic missions held over holiday breaks in churches

around New Zealand, visiting, for example. East Belt, Christchurch in 1931, Waihi

and Dominion Road in 1935 and Opunake in 1937. These meetings lifted Trinity's

profile in the wider church and earned the college some praise. Writing to the

Methodist newspaper to thank the students for their visit to East Belt, for example,

Frank Thompson of St Albans noted that all "the addresses were of high order. The

old message presented in convincing modern manner. Singing good. General

attendance.. .excellent." "If these men are a sample of those now being trained in our

College," he remarked, "then our Church has nothing to fear."56

As the students

themselves observed, the missions made a good impression among people who

doubted the value of college training. It was rather revealing, wrote one student in

1937, to find how people were "just a little uncertain about the men from Trinity. In

each place there were good people who had to confess to the men that before they had

met them they were quite sure that a Trinity Student was some sort of a heretic! Why

has this conception got abroad?"57

Continuing a tradition which dated back to Dunholme days, ministry students also

spoke at open-air meetings, held on Friday nights outside the Pitt Street Church,

together with the Rev. Tom Olds (1890-1966).58

Leading these gatherings was a

rigorous experience as students exposed their faith to the criticism of ordinary

Aucklanders. In 1937 the meetings were said to attract an audience of between 150

and 200 people, and the public question time was a crowd favourite. The students had

to learn to think on their feet in response to questions about pacifism, the problem of

evil, the church's role in resisting progress, evolution, and the number of Christians in

54

W. A. Sinclair,"The New President of the Conference,1927",NZMT,12 March 1927, p. 6. 55

Harry Ranston, "The Training of the Ministry", Ibid., 11 November 1933, p. 8. 56

Ibid., 4 April 1931, p. 3. 57

"Students' Missions", Trinity College Magazine, October 1937, pp. 7-8. 58

In 1935 Olds commenced a fifteen year ministry at Pitt Street. A "natural orator whom

few could resist", he had the ability to speak to people outside ordinary church circles and

became known for his popular radio ministry. MAC, 1966, p. 20.



Mt Eden jail. The value of the open-air experience lay in the way it took students

outside the known world of the college and circuit. Their own reflections revealed a

mixture of social concern and evangelical zeal. "No College man can take part in an

Open Air", wrote one student in 1937, "without having the very depths of his heart

moved for the crowds without Christ who throng our Streets. We are not in the open

air to entertain, but to save".59

LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP AND EVANGELICAL MISSION

Despite the college's involvement in missions and open-air meetings, some Methodists

remained critical of Trinity's efforts in training for evangelism. Church members like

D.H. Woodcock expressed concern about the liberal nature of the college's biblical

teaching, while others viewed the academic enterprise itself as irrelevant to what they

considered to be the real needs of ministry. Writing to the Methodist Times in 1937,

for example, the Rev. Ainsley Daglish (1908-1967), a student at Trinity from 1930 to

1932, argued that "men are not saved by Biblical criticism, Greek, and the like." He

believed New Zealand Methodism suffered from a "dearth of spiritual power", and

traced the fault to "a definite and pathetic lack" in the college's training for

evangelism.60

He suggested that Methodists take a lesson from the

interdenominational New Zealand Bible Training Institute, founded in Auckland in

1922 for the training of lay church workers and missionaries. The BTI was an

initiative of the Baptist minister, the Rev. Joseph Kemp, who sought to establish "an

identifiably anti-modernist institution which would teach fundamentalist theology."61

Daglish claimed that, with "all their so-called fundamentalism the students of that

college show an enthusiasm and self-sacrifice for the very things we are supposed to

represent, that ought to make us blush for shame - and they get the results."62

Unlike

Laws and Ranston, Daglish saw no way of combining liberal scholarship and

evangelical zeal, and this view tended to prevail within Methodism more and more as

the twentieth century progressed. The difficult task of holding together modem and

traditional emphases upon the informed mind and the warm heart may count among

the early principals' greatest achievements.

The history of Methodist training for ministry in New Zealand reflects Methodism's

struggle to understand its own identity. Like any national institution, the theological

college had a key role in shaping and expressing denominational identity, and those

involved in early planning for the college had a vision of ministry in a new century.

An encounter with modem scholarship and the development of evangelical experience

59

"Christ and the Auckland Crowds!", Trinity College Magazine, October 1937, p. 7. 60

J. A. Daglish, "Training for Evangelism", NZMT, 28 August 1937, p. 134. 61

Kemp was minister of the Auckland Baptist Tabernacle from 1920 to 1933, and was the

prime interpreter of American fundamentalism in New Zealand in the 1920s. J. M. R.

Simpson, "Joseph W. Kemp and the Impact of American Fundamentalism in New

Zealand", BA Hons., University ofWaikato, 1987, p. 62. 62

Daglish, "Training for Evangelism", p. 134.



were seen as major priorities of the new college's training programme. A deep-seated

Methodist ambivalence about the value of the intellectual enterprise, however, made

such priorities difficult to hold together, and contributed to continued debate over the

nature of theological education. To Methodists living at the end of the twentieth

century, some of the resulting arguments may sound surprisingly familiar.

Trinity College students. 1930s.



SOME MUSINGS ON MY PERSONAL SPIRITUAL

JOURNEY

Presented by Rev. Jack Penman to the Auckland Ministerial Synod,

25 February 2000.

There is always this constant struggle going on within me. I want to say that my story

is one of people, of books, of places and movements. I have an unpayable debt. That is

one side. The other is why have I responded to these influences in the way that I have?

Why listen to this one rather than that person? Why am I captivated by this idea rather

than that? Why do I react in the way that I do? And the questions are endless because

that is the journey and it is never ending...

Rev. Jack Penman

1. Introduction to Christianity – Home.

Mother was a Corp Cadet Leader in the Salvation Army in Ashburton. She was

everything I could wish for - nurtured me. We had family prayers on Sunday evenings

and after evening meeting at the Citadel we would sing hymns around the piano -

Moody and Sankey. When I was about nine at an evangelistic evening service I felt a

compulsion to go forward to what is known as the penitent rail. It deepened a sense of

commitment but it also left a legacy of guilt. My Dad led prayers on Sunday night - he

was the disciplinarian. We were not permitted to play, whistle or hold a ball on

Sundays. I lost a very good friend because I dared play cricket on Sunday while

enjoying the hospitality of his home. There was no excuse. It was not until I was

married and our children were educating us rapidly that I could buy them an ice cream

on Sunday! The only time I remember my father in Church was at my sister's

wedding. He would not come to mine.



2. At age 12, I became dissatisfied with the Army.

We decided that we would go with next door neighbours to Baring Square Methodist

Church. A very gracious minister, Angus McBean, who became President in

Centennial Year 1939-40. I loved the Church - Christian Endeavour meeting early

Sunday morning where children were encouraged to speak, take leadership, grow in

an encouraging environment; then on to morning service; in the afternoon Sunday

School and then the evening service which then was always the main service of the

day. That was a good day! I had a very simple faith. I was unquestioning. A tragedy

for me when my mother died when she was 49, I was 12. We were lined up by our

father and told "From now on, you are on your own." It felt like that then, but I had the

Church - and it was the Church. Grew into Bible Class - Bible camps, retreats, the

companionship. Church tennis club, the Church hockey team. I left secondary school

after two years and on 1 March 1939 at 14 I started work.

WWII started and I enlisted when I was 17

I enlisted when I was 17 in order to get away the moment I turned 18. I spent four

years in the Air Force and when eventually I returned to Ashburton I found a new

minister, W T Blight, a former Tutor at Trinity College. I could discern a change

taking place - he was a teacher and I was fascinated, then challenged and stirrings

about the Church which had been around for a number of years began to go beyond

niggling to confrontation. I responded after a sermon I just could not avoid. WTB

asked H L Fiebig, the Connexional Secretary, to meet with us and talk through the call

to ministry. The upshot after some escapist attempts on my part was that WT gave me

every Friday night for a year to prepare me for Candidates Examinations. I was not a

reader, I started in effect from scratch and my love of books began - rather late I might

say, but not too late. The first was C F Hunter, What a Christian Believes and Why. I

was baptised, and finally accepted by the Executive Conference in February 1949 and

went into College the same month.

College was a whole new world.

I had been working for 10 years and here for the first time I was part of a real

community of learning. E W Hames - the ordered worship experience - the centrality

of the Sacrament. J J Lewis - ecumenist mining the scriptures. D O Williams -

preacher and counsellor - stimulator of group work. Colleagues who supported,

encouraged, questioned and shared life at the very deepest level. That was a

watershed. It laid a foundation of study - a craving for knowledge - and it stimulated a

commitment to spare no effort and to use every means available to grow. Bonds

forged in College have been broken only by death, and then that does not fully convey

my continuing belief in the communion of saints.

I was plainly frightened of exams.

Apart from Greek and Hebrew I did very well and it frustrated my friends when I

expressed my diffidence. My problem was deeper and I know that my self-esteem had



a pretty low rating. I recall the penitent form when I was 9. I recall and still have the

letter from R B Tinsley, the minister at Baring Square, who baptised Daphne. He

wrote to me at my candidature, "Never cease to marvel that you, you of all people,

should be called by God to be a minister." That touched a chord. My emotions were

very close to the surface. I had a pietistic faith and I had a very simplistic

understanding of ministry. I found it difficult to relax - a bit uptight.

Probation marked a more intellectual struggle.

It was triggered by College life. I can remember my first criticism service so clearly.

Being told to express less of WT Blight and more of Penman and that my preaching

compiled by the heap method was porky. That spurred me on. It was stimulated

further by our first guest after our marriage and first probationary appointment to the

Dunedin Central Mission. It was D T Niles who came from the WCC and World

Student Christian Federation. He stayed a week. He expanded my world, ecumenical

took on a new dimension, theology needed to become my theology, I had to stretch

my brain even further.

First decade of ministry through the fifties.

Dogmatic theology - trying to develop from the textbook of College - W N Clarke's

Outline of Christian Theology. Vincent Taylor, Principal of Wesley College

Headingly in Leeds, one of British Methodism's scholars, wrote that trilogy, Jesus and

His Sacrifice, Forgiveness and Reconciliation and The Atonement in NT Teaching. He

was a great help. In 1953 the World Methodist Council, in a campaign of world-wide

evangelism, got Vincent Taylor to write a popular expression of theology and it

resulted in what was known as 1953 Study Circle. It was a brilliant piece of work

published in The Methodist Recorder over a period of weeks. I remember one quote

that has stuck, "Sin is self-coronation. Saying in effect, I will not have you to reign

over me." It was the heyday of Leslie Weatherhead, Dr Sangster and Donald Soper.

See how it deepened my love of counselling, preaching - and with Donald Soper - the

sacramental ministry and its expression in political action in the world. It was an

appealing socialist dimension that made sense, and it still does. Reinforced by first

Chairman Mac Hoddinott who took me with him to the Railway Workshops for

weekly debates. All this made strong links with my experience of the great depression

of the thirties. My experience of 'swaggers' coming to our boarding house begging for

meals: as well as delivering containers of soup and food to some disadvantaged. And I

started to gather aids to devotion - and found constant companionship in the Methodist

Hymn Book, the Confessions of Augustine and a brass crucifix which I purchased from

the Presbyterian Bookroom in the Octagon. I was introduced to biographies and

autobiographies and that started a further life interest - the value of being

autobiographical and contextual.

The sixties were a stimulating turmoil.

I added to my aids to devotion The Collects for the Day with Commentary and daily

followed through the Order for Morning Prayer. A section of the Membership Roll



was covered each day. I subscribed to the British Weekly and relied heavily on the

Expository Times to keep me up to date with the latest recommended books on

theology, biblical work and mission and evangelism. D T Niles had just published his

Upon the Earth on the Mission of God and the Missionary Enterprise of the Church.

The WCC was stimulating work on the place of the Laity - the whole People of God

and The Missionary Structure of the Local Congregation and I was caught up in the

Lay Movement around the country, visiting most Districts, participating in District

Conferences. Unity movement - convened the group that brought together the three

women's movements into one Women's Fellowship. John A T Robinson's Honest to

God broke into the headlines and captured the interest of the community and made the

Christian faith a subject of common conversation. I respected the Bishop of Woolwich

immensely because I was so helped by his biblical writings and especially his

Eschatology, In the End God. I had been stimulated by Zahnt's What Kind of God?

The friendship with DT developed to where I was told I was like a frog in a well and

needed the stimulation of some post-graduate study. He arranged the scholarship to

Bossey in Switzerland to attend the Graduate School. The theme was Syncretism.

Daily services distinctive to Bossey, sacramental services according to the various

traditions participating - all nourished me. From the Orthodox Liturgy in touch with

creation and the Roman Catholic with its appealing earthy piety to the surprising

Lutheran High Mass. Hans Conzelman in his biblical studies on resurrection,

theological and biblical debates especially with the German contingent, turned me

inside out and upside down.

At this time

At this time I took out a comprehensive subscription to every publication of the WCC.

There was excellent research from the best minds - trends forecast took years to filter

down to congregational life. There were Divisions doing magnificent work - think of

Mission and Evangelism, Inter-Church Aid, Refugee and World Service, Commission

on International Affairs. The Laity - to read the autobiography of Visser 't Hooft is to

read history!

My travels had added to my devotional aids

- Salvador Dali's "Last Supper" from a Washington Gallery. It remains above my desk

and has embraced me daily even in the days my mind rejected the implications. I also

purchased Gill's The Glorious Company, a two-volume account of the Lives of Great

Christians for Daily Devotion. It was really keeping company with the saints.

The whole secular movement influenced me.

Harvey Cox, The Secular City; his Feast of Fools with the use of imagination and

symbolism in worship. Even now he stimulates with his critique of The Market as

God. A rather interesting expose of it as a theological system. Emphasis and interest

lay in those things to which the WCC continually pointed - mission, unity, justice, the

health of the community. I was acknowledging the validity of different theologies -



Black, Feminist, their liberation brought enrichment. It was in Marriage Guidance that

I had my first effective Supervisor, and personal growth owes much to the human

potential movement. Ecumenical had been there from the beginning. Now as we

established the Wellington ICM, it deepened. Church union was merely a sign of the

unity of all things. The focus was not the Church, and never should be. Now we

acknowledge our interdependence with that which is as yet way beyond our ken. I

believed that worship arose from the struggle itself and that worship was in fact the

struggle. We were oriented towards the city - researching its needs -trying to respond

to its cries, giving voice to the voiceless and seeking to empower the community to

care for itself. More emphasis was given to acting our way into a new way of thinking

rather than the reverse. I grew because I was a member of an ecumenical team of

ministers variously gifted, committed to remaining together through every success and

failure, rubbing shoulders every day, meeting for nurturing and business every week

and going into retreat for some days at least twice a year. We were accountable and

disciplined. That experience reinforced my opposition to changing our Circuits into

Parishes. Circuits stimulated the team approach and now we are again seeing the need

for shared ministry between lay and ordained, fully and partly stipended, self-

supporting, part-time or whatever variation is possible and appropriate.

Five years back from Bossey.

It was five years after I came back from Bossey that Lloyd Geering preached in

Wesley to a packed Church, opening the University year. He delivered that sermon on

the resurrection of Jesus, delivered with grace and warmly received. The Dominion

reporter rang me following the service wanting comment and affirming strongly he

would get headlines whatever. I referred him back to the preacher; and then followed

the controversy. It certainly deepened the gap between differing interpretations of the

faith.

The British Weekly

When I first subscribed to The British Weekly - there used to be a weekly article by

Peter Parson. One quote I still pull out and read, "The Living God is inescapable. God

is not the God found at the end of an argument or the God of outer space or some

other place - but is encountered whenever gratitude rises to commitment, wherever

duty becomes an inescapable imperative." I went through a strange experience

following my retirement when reading around the likes of Spong. I was given one of

Cupitt's early books and I was very hesitant to read it. It was an intellectual challenge.

However I read it and I bought more and more of him and I was absorbed by the

arguments and I did not find God at the end of them! In spite of it all I had this sense

of belonging, being part of a long tradition of challenged people. On reflection I

became for a time a bit cynical but I continued to read and have not stopped. The

people who have really fed me recently - Douglas John Hall with his theological

trilogy Thinking, Professing and Confessing in the Faith; Brueggemann taking me by

the hand into Poetry and Prophetic Imagination - his sermons - his social reading of



the Hebrew Scriptures, there is my meat. Borg with a landmark Meeting Jesus Again

for the First Time. The fruit of all this is that I am now aware of how little I know and

that I am caught up in a great mystery of existence. I value the ever-changing

deepening, enriching confrontation by the spirit of that Man again and again in my

neighbour, and looking over my shoulder and acknowledging that I have been the

constant recipient of what I can only describe as Grace.

Parker Palmer (a Quaker)

In his latest book has given me some words to describe how I feel, "Truth is an eternal

conversation about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline". Then he

quotes a couplet of Robert Frost,

We dance round in a ring and suppose

But the secret sits in the middle and knows.

it is the transcendent secret at the centre of the community of truth.

I suppose if there is a dominant word that comes through to me from both the first

Testament and the New, it is that the God of the biblical tradition is about giving and

renewing life. That means that anything which demeans or detracts from life,

dehumanises or persecutes or treats unjustly is to be exposed for what it is by

announcing in every way possible an alternative way of operating - a new way of life.

The great sadness about the Church at the moment is its seeming absorption in its own

life. The focus is all out of kilter. Our great concern and passion should be for the life

of the community and its place in the whole scheme of things. Each of us has to

struggle with what that challenge means for us.

We will not agree and that is good

To quote Palmer again...

"We invite diversity into our community not because it is pc but because diverse

viewpoints are demanded by the manifold mysteries of great things.

We embrace ambiguity not because we are confused or indecisive but because we

understand the inadequacy of our concepts to embrace the vastness of great things.

We welcome creative conflict not because we are angry or hostile but because conflict

is required to correct our biases and prejudices about the nature of great things.

We experience humility not because we have fought and lost but because humility is

the only lens through which great things can be seen and once we have seen them,

humility is the only possible posture."

I once shared with others in a Retreat with Norman Goreham "Into the Desert"

In the experience of the desert I had three experiences which are true of my life - and

they still recur.

1 Sand storm - visibility nil - uncomfortable.



2 Sparkling sand - dazzling brilliance - too much to bear.

3 Early morning patterns following wind - ever renewing.

And so life goes on.

It is exciting.

I am grateful for it and I am full of hope!



MINISTERING THE GOSPEL IN A TIME OF

CHANGE

A reflection offered by Rev. Selwyn Dawson at the Auckland Methodist Synod in

March 2000.

Rev. Selwyn Dawson

There are some advantages in growing old. Whatever happens to the body, one's

memory bank becomes ever richer with the passing of time. What most people regard

as history, we can remember as personal reminiscence -sometimes much more clearly

than what we had for breakfast yesterday. I was bom in 1918, at the end of the Great

War, grew up in the depression years, during the rise of fascism and Nazism and the

Second World War. I can remember my own refusal to believe the first emerging

reports of the holocaust, the thunderclap of the Hiroshima bomb. Within a couple of

years I found myself in war-shattered Japan as a padre with J Force. On the day we

arrived, I walked among the packing case shacks of that city as new life struggled to

emerge.

My generation experienced the coming of the first Labour government and the

introduction of the Welfare State. Great world events have happened in our time - and

in yours; the dissolution of the British Empire, the rise and fall of communism, the

Cold War with all its consequences, the re-creation of Israel after 1900 years, the fall

of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the emergence of a united

Europe after centuries of strife, and the emergence of communist China, and



subsequent change. We have seen the economic pendulum swinging from the old

socialism to the new Right - and wonder if it may not be swinging back again.

The dominating feature of our lifetime has been change. Nothing has stood still.

Much of the change has been driven by science and technology. As a schoolboy, I

well remember how our class was suddenly suspended and we all rushed outside to

see - a Gypsy Moth plane flying overhead. Since then I have flown many times, twice

around the world. Men have stood on the moon, and are confidently working towards

landing on Mars. The advance of science has touched every aspect of life. Sit down

and count how many features in your home have a microchip buried in them. Have

you a computer, a cell phone, a video recorder, a fax or answer-phone? - for that

matter, a pop-up toaster or microwave oven? I had to conduct my whole ministry

without any of them. The whole IT revolution has hardly got started, but it has already

changed our daily lives beyond our wildest dreams when we were young. What is

more, the rate of change is speeding up - growing exponentially, as they say, because

the most important discoveries and inventions are themselves tools of change. Invent

the transistor or the microchip, or the pill, or discover penicillin; plot the human

genome or hoist the Hubble telescope into space - any one of these and some huge

area of life is ineradicably set for change.

But technical change does not stop there. It invades the way we think. Compare

modem art, poetry, literature, music, philosophy, history, biblical scholarship and the

very vocabulary we use, and you will see that there is no area of life which has not

been subject to radical change. It is as if we - all of us - are fish swimming in the sea,

and the character of the seawater is constantly changing around us, so that we either

adjust our ways of living or we find ourselves profoundly uncomfortable and hardly

able to function. I will mention only two words or phrases to describe these changes -

secularism and post modernism. These prevailing ways of thinking have their roots in

the past, but are now in full flower in our western world. If we apply ourselves to our

ministries as if they did not exist, we will not be heard by the great majority of those

to whom we are trying to minister. Our ministry will become increasingly irrelevant.

We may have started our work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, armed with comfortable

certainties, but unless we move with change we can end up like refugees in an alien

land. Truly the past is another country. Or as Heraclitus wrote long ago, "You can't

step twice into the same river". Sometimes our people, stressed by constant change in

the world outside, turn to the Church as a place where time can be counted on to stand

still. They are irritated and indeed rebellious when they discover that in worship, in

the preaching they hear, and in doctrine and ethics, their church is not immune from

change. It may indeed become itself an agent of change. This anxiety can help to

explain the emotional intensity of some conservative reform movements within the

church.

We must be careful here. We are not preaching to the world in general, but to these

people who have taken the trouble to gather for worship in this place at this time. We

might wish they were better informed, more flexible, more up to date in their thinking,



but they are what they are, and will not be too willing to relinquish ideas and

convictions which have served them well. It is their church too. We may have moved

beyond the pictures and stories and myths and aphorisms which go to make up their

apparatus of faith, but in trying to move them a step forward, we must be careful not

to move them too swiftly and drastically beyond their capacity to receive. Faith works

on many levels, and those we sometimes call simple Christians continue to move

mountains for God, and intuitively know things about God's kingdom which escape

the learned. It is a matter of pastoral judgment how far and how fast we can move

them to accept and live by new insights.

Nevertheless, preachers and pastors must squarely face the fact of change. Perhaps we think that, because we are servants of the eternal gospel, we can claim

some sort of exemption from change. We quote from Hebrews, "Jesus Christ is the

same, yesterday, today and forever" as if the package deal we received in our

Christian upbringing and theological education has rendered us immune from the virus

of change. We may even imagine that the Bible is an infallible book which answers

every question, and we need never rethink the fundamentals of our faith. Secure on

firm land, we can call out instructions to our people, struggling in the cross currents of

the stream of time. This is of course a caricature. We are in there with them, facing

their dilemmas, meeting new and unprecedented challenges, unable to come up easily

with relevant answers to newly emerging problems, with no infallible book and no

infallible pope to bail us out.

I may sound discouraging, but we must clear away the comfortable misconceptions

before we can find our way to the new certainties. Israel had to leave Egypt and face

the wilderness before God could disclose himself to them. If we want to meet God at

all it must be in the torrent of change. Had they stayed in Egypt they would have been

absorbed in that alien culture, and all thoughts of a Promised Land would have faded

from their memories. By our very calling and ordination we are committed to being

with our people as they face whatever change is born from the womb of time. Only so

can we help them to experience God and find their way forward.

To do that, we must try to look at life through stereoscopic eyes. On the one hand, we

have the job of being very down to earth, keeping up to date with life as people have

to live it today - its politics, its economics, its scientific and technical profile, the

sporting and entertainment and artistic climate which dictates so much of our thinking,

the mores of the society in which we live. We must not only live in it, but try to

understand its hidden dynamics. Perhaps our task might be more like that of the

America's Cup crewman who swarms up the mast and keeps his eyes open for the

distant signs of changes in the wind patterns, the ruffled surface far out, or the

uncanny calm to starboard, so he can alert the tacticians and helmsman on the deck far

below.

But that is only half our task. Our eye should also be fixed on that other picture - the

eternal world of which we are by our calling and ordination exemplars and custodians.



We have the whole apparatus of the Church to help us - its liturgies, scriptures,

sacraments, hymns and prayers, theologies and pastoral disciplines, as well as the

institution which employs us to do this very thing. The lectionary and church calendar

are there to help us deploy the whole spectrum of the gospel. We have a weekly

opportunity to help our people look at life through this stereoscopic perspective, to

help them see, as it were, through God's eyes. If our services invite them to escape into

a world where nothing of the real world they face on Monday intrudes, we will have

failed them. When Karl Barth told us we should pray with the Bible in one hand and

the newspaper in the other, I cannot think he was wrong.

No one can tell, in this age of accelerating change, what agenda we and our people

will have to face. Futurologists always get it wrong, and the theory of chaos explains

why long range forecasts can never be trusted. We can make educated guesses.

Already on the horizon are great issues like climate change, globalisation,

biotechnology, the gap between the rich and the poor both locally and globally, caring

for a sick planet, the spread of information technology. Each of us can add to the list.

We cannot expect to be experts in any one of these or a hundred other emerging fields,

and the last thing I am suggesting is that our sermons become muddled commentaries

on public affairs. Yet unless we deal with real issues of the world in which our people

have to live, we cannot minister to them - especially the young. Unless we have some

living word for them we fail them. If we regularly dodge the big issues we may turn

our church into a cosy religious asylum, offering a sort of chaplaincy to refugees who

have opted out, but it will not be the church as a living embodiment of Christ.

One thing is certain; we are also priests and prophets, custodians of a faith which has

weathered the storms of time and change. We have to know in our hearts the nature of

the Church we serve, the gospel we preach, and our place within it. The Church is not

a do-gooder friendly-society, whose sole job is to pick up stragglers, nor is it a society

for the preservation and propagation of an ancient book. It does not exist to make

people feel good or promote a woolly spirituality, or as a society dedicated to the

reform of politics or economics. It is not an agency devoted solely to the saving of

individual souls, or to offer the anxious the hope of life after death. The Church is not

there primarily to be the custodian of middle class values of thrift, honesty and hard

work and to help the down and out, though plenty of respectable non-churchgoers

want it to be just that. It is not even called to proclaim and defend a whole structure of

orthodox doctrine, since the faith expresses itself within the living culture of the day,

and that changes decade by decade and is changing under our eyes.

The Church's mission may well contain or touch on all of these elements and much

more, but it exists first and foremost to be the Body of Christ, speaking his word and

doing his work. Without Jesus Christ at its centre it cannot be itself, and it has nothing

distinctive to say about God or man amidst the clamour of the world's competing

loyalties and divinities.



Even here we must be careful. Christ has been conscripted to bless every banner,

and give victory to every sectional interest, even that of the Ku Klux Klan. Many who

invoke his name to bless their cause will eventually hear him say, "I never knew you."

Yet it is Jesus Christ alone who gives us our charter to be the Christian Church. Many

- perhaps most people - say they believe in God, but that can mean anything or

nothing. What kind of God do they believe in? Our distinctiveness comes from the

fact that a man called Jesus of Nazareth lived, taught, healed, died and rose again - and

became for those who followed him the Christ. He is the lens through which we see

God, the very image of his glory. At the same time he defines for us what it is to be a

human being, the template against which every human life - and social system - is to

be measured. He is the word made flesh. God was in Christ reconciling the world to

himself. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. That is the open secret

which constitutes the Church. He is its heart. That is the truth we try to express when

we speak of the Holy Spirit. Without him we have nothing distinctive to say. With him

as our exemplar, saviour and guide, we can face the world of constant and sometimes

menacing change - and bring a true ministry to our people and to the world around us.

But you may say, there's the rub. Who and what is Jesus? There is such a pile of

scholarship and doctrine built around him, so many huge tomes dealing with every

aspect of his life. There are so many conflicting schools of interpretation, that it's

hopeless for any ordinary parish presbyter to hope to find his or her way through

them. Where does one start? The Gospels are as good a place as any. They were

written down within thirty or forty years of the events they describe, long before

theologians and scholars had constructed towering theological systems and rigid

hierarchical organizations. The gospels are our basic sources, and are available to each

of us in a dozen translations even if, like me, you have little Greek and no Hebrew.

The Gospels do not comprise the whole of the Bible, but they are, for Christians, its

true centre, and we work outwards from them - not the other way round.

I have spent the last year or so doing just that - writing a short story of Jesus of

Nazareth as told in the gospels, not to please the scholars, but to try to see c early tor

myself the man who started it all - and to see him against the background of his own

times. I wish I had done so many years before. We cannot worship him as the Christ

unless we first come to terms with his humanity, see him in his own setting, and

understand how, following his death, his followers came to understand that under the

homespun of a Galilean working man, was a living spirit who would be their constant

companion to the end of the age In some special sense which they tried to define. God

was in him, irrevocably committed to his human family.

As we work through those pages we discover that his whole life mission is summed up

in one phrase, the Kingdom of God, and his whole nature that of agape, love. Follow

that thread and you will find the themes of healing of liberation, of forgiveness and

reconciliation, of grace and peace and power come alive no matter what one's

circumstances or culture, no matter how intimidating the pace of change. We can

preach Jesus Christ and his Kingdom in a way that is inescapably personal, but we



distort the gospel message gravely if our preaching deals only with personal salvation

and personal ethics. When we preach the Kingdom of God in all its fullness, our

preaching allows Jesus to step out of the pages of an ancient book and become an

active participant in our people's daily lives as they step out of their door on a Monday

morning

Let me be personal. Almost forty years ago I went to minister at Durham Street in

Christchurch, and found myself ministering to a congregation which included five

aging ex-presidents, and a whole cross section of people including young people,

some of them university students. They formed an after church youth fellowship. Last

Labour weekend, all those years later, the then members of the after church youth

fellowship held a Reunion and invited us to attend Some sixty of them spent the

weekend together, most from Christchurch, but others from all over New Zealand and

some from Australia. It was fascinating to meet these "young" folk thirty and forty

years later, and hear their stories. Many are now grandparents, and some hold or have

held responsible jobs in government and university. What became clear was that those

years had meant a great deal to them. One told us that she had come to think of

Durham Street as her Turangawaewae, where she had formed her values.

When my turn came to speak, I reminded them of how turbulent that particular

decade, the sixties, had been. The sixties had been a decade of unremitting change.

The whole question of race and civil rights had come to the boil in the US, and Jack

and Bobbie Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Men had landed

on the moon. The Vietnam war spanned almost the whole decade. The Cold war

overarched everything else with its nuclear shadow. Feminism arrived on the scene,

the pill came into widespread use, and freer attitudes to sex were abroad - and not only

at Woodstock and among the flower people. The thaw between Protestants and

Catholics began with the Second Vatican Council, and the book Honest to God set the

cat among the theological pigeons. We suddenly became aware of the ecological

threat to our planet and the whole conservation movement took off. Pakeha New

Zealanders became uneasily aware that all was not well in Maori Pakeha relations; the

invisible and unmentionable gay community suddenly surfaced and a good deal of

painful rethinking had to be done all round. All through that period I had to climb the

heavenly stairs each Sunday and preach a relevant gospel. Of course I had no clear

and definitive answers to all that ferment of change, but I had a pulpit and a timeless

gospel which allowed me to bring the issues under the scrutiny of the Kingdom. All

these years later it seems that, without remembering any one sermon I had preached,

they felt they had been helped to think their way through these unprecedented issues

which would not go away. Should our ministry today be any different? Are the new

millennium's events likely to be any less surprising and disturbing?

But there is more to preaching and ministering than helping our people to see the

world around them through Christian eyes. As presbyters, we are not just ethical and

doctrinal advisers; we are mediators and servants of the New Covenant. The word

Covenant is of enormous importance both in the Jewish scriptures and in the New



Testament. In the Old Testament the unknown God reaches out and initiates a

thoroughly unequal partnership between Himself and Israel. "I will be your God and

you will be my people." It is a personal relationship of love and trust and obedience,

and through it they will learn the nature of the God who for his own purposes has

taken them under his wing. It will be an uncomfortable partnership, and they will

disobey and backslide and follow other gods and suffer the judgments of defeat and

exile. But the sense of being chosen has followed the Jews ever since, and made them

a singular people. As preachers, we must be careful not to suggest that somehow God

has abrogated that original covenant.

But there was a New Covenant, not inscribed on stone tablets, but written in the

human heart. He spoke of it on the night of his betrayal when he served them with

bread and wine. This was a covenant of grace and, unlike the first, embraces all

humankind. The Church with all its faults is the community constituted by that

covenant. Our task is to recognise and celebrate it, and invite all to enter and find new

life. The New Covenant is the heart of the Church's life, its binding and constituting

factor, the very source of its being. We celebrate it in our central sacrament.

Since retirement we have worshipped at a Cooperating parish church whose services

are eucharistic. At the culmination of every service, we move forward and receive the

bread and wine in remembrance of him. By this simple action we endorse our own

commitment to Christ and the covenant. We take our place in that long succession

which reaches right back to the Upper Room and to Christ himself. At that moment

we recall that we are not just admirers of Jesus' teachings, but are his friends and

servants, bound to him by the most sacred and personal of ties.

Whether we find ourselves administering the sacrament or receiving it, we do not

expect to be given glib answers to the vexing questions of how to live in a changing

world. We do know however that our Lord revealed and initiated that new Kingdom

which God intends in the fullness of time to bring to fruition and that here and now we

can be its citizens and servants. Holding that conviction, we can turn to the changing

and demanding and sometimes bewildering world around us, and begin to make sense

of it, knowing what to reject and what to welcome and retain.

Our communion service often ends with the words of the presbyter: "Go now to love

and serve the Lord. Go in peace." To which we answer: "Amen. We go in the name of

Christ." Is there any greater privilege or responsibility than that of the Christian

presbyter, to mediate an eternal covenant in a changing world?



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